Deep Squat Landmines

Today I want to share a cool core exercise that I’ve been toying around with and really diggin’. As you already know if you read my blog with any regularity, I’m not terribly creative when it comes to naming stuff, so I called it pretty much exactly what it is: deep squat landmines.

As you can probably figure out, it’s just a landmine done in the bottom of a squat.

Before I talk about why I like it, I’ll show you what it looks like so we can be on the same page.

Now for why I like it.

Basically, it gives a lot of bang for your buck and kills a lot of birds with one stone it terms of addressing both mobility and stability.

I’ll be honest; I really don’t like doing mobility work, and I really don’t like doing core work, so if I can combine them into one exercise, that’s a huge win in my book.

The landmine is a great anti-rotation core exercise to build rotary stability. Now that I’m getting back into golf, I think it’s very important to incorporate anti-rotation work, and in my mind there’s nothing better than the landmine to do that.

Doing the landmine in the bottom of the deep squat not only increases the rotary stability demand on the core, but it also serves as one heck of a good stretch for the hips, as well as building stability in the pelvis. I’m a big advocate of the basic squat stretch where you just sit in the bottom position and push the knees out. I also like doing it with a light weight in the goblet hold, and I’m a fan of goblet squats for the same reason. Using the landmine functions very similarly to the goblet squat in the sense that it forces you to stay upright and get into a good position.

When you start moving your arms, you have to work hard to stabilize the torso but also the hips to keep from shifting or swaying.

If you keep your arms straight, it’s also a pretty good workout for the shoulders.

This is really tough, so make sure you have regular landmines down before trying it. When you do try it, only go as far as you can go before you begin to lose stability in your core and/or hips. How do you know that point? Trust me, you’ll know when it happens. On that note, the other thing I like about this exercise is that you can’t really cheat it, so when you’re done, you’re done. That keeps you honest and also keeps you from hurting yourself.

If you have a light barbell that may be a good place to start, or maybe even a PVC pipe.

Also, if you don’t have a specific device to anchor the barbell like I’m using in the video, simply put the barbell in a corner. Just make sure it’s not sheetrock; I’ve made that mistake, and you can probably guess how that turned out. Woops!

So to wrap it up, if you’ve spent some time getting good at landmines and want a way to challenge yourself further and build hip mobility in the process, give these a rip and let me know what you think.